


A Conduit for Unimaginable Power - An Alternate Conclusion to "The Parting of the Ways"

by CharacterAbsquatulation



Series: "The four of us have had enough adventure for one day..." [1]
Category: Doctor Who
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Multi, POV Third Person, Pre-Relationship, Series 1 Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-10
Updated: 2014-07-10
Packaged: 2018-02-08 05:23:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,658
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1928220
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CharacterAbsquatulation/pseuds/CharacterAbsquatulation
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"The Doctor lifts the goddess into his arms and kisses her forehead. That’s more than he’s ever dared before, but he can’t stop to savor the moment. 'I think you need a Doctor.' He carries her like his bride across the TARDIS threshold. The doors hiss shut behind them.</p><p>"He brings her as close as he dares to the TARDIS’s exposed heart, blinding in its brilliance. 'Come on, old girl,' he pleads, 'take the power back. You helped her save the universe, now save her. Save my Rose… Please, love, please… There must be something you can do.'"</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Conduit for Unimaginable Power - An Alternate Conclusion to "The Parting of the Ways"

**Author's Note:**

> Nine is my doctor. Full stop. I love Ten and Eleven too (how could you not?), but they're not mine.
> 
> All I could think, watching the end of series 1, is that everyone got ripped off. What a terrible way to say goodbye to Jack and Nine both-- and as beautiful as Ten/Rose can be, I just can't get over Nine/Rose/Jack... and his TARDIS too. I'm quite the fan.
> 
> This is my story of keeping Nine going, with all the potential these relationships hold.

The Dalek Emperor crumbles to golden dust before the Doctor’s eyes-- before the Bad Wolf’s unseeing stare. In the silence the Daleks leave behind, the woman caging the beast shudders. 

One step towards her, palms up like she’s a wild thing. “Rose, you've done it,” he whispers, prouder than he’s ever been-- and pretty damn terrified. “Now stop. Just let go.” 

She’s glowing, rapturous, transcendent. “How can I let go of this? I bring life!” It’s like the words pull her into herself, further from him.

It’s all the Doctor can do not to curse aloud. “But this is wrong! You can't control life and death!”

“But I can! The sun and the moon, the day and night...” Her radiance flickers and a spasm shakes her, clouding her golden eyes. “But why do they hurt?”

The Doctor’s walnut of a face crumples. They’ve barely begun, it’s not supposed to end like this. It can’t end like this… “The power's gonna kill you and it's my fault.”

“I can see everything. All that is, all that was, all that ever could be...” She’s drifting away from him again.

He has to pull her back, get her to focus, or he’ll lose her. What can he say? “That's what I see-- all the time.” Her solar gaze locks on him. Perfect, yes. “And doesn't it drive you mad?”

She nods, and the weight of the wolf rattles her skull; she has to steady her temples with her hands. “Oh, my head…”

“Come here,” he pleads.

“It's killing me!” she wails, dropping to her knees.

The Doctor lifts the goddess into his arms and kisses her forehead. That’s more than he’s ever dared before, but he can’t stop to savor the moment. “I think you need a Doctor.” He carries her like his bride across the TARDIS threshold. The doors hiss shut behind them.

He brings her as close as he dares to the TARDIS’s exposed heart, blinding in its brilliance. “Come on, old girl,” he pleads, “take the power back. You helped her save the universe, now save her. Save my Rose… Please, love, please… There must be something you can do.”

His beautiful ship purs in agreement, and then begins to sing. Her engines hum a melody of life and valour and an eternal future. The light of her heart pulses and aches and dances along.

On a cloud of glittering light, the Bad Wolf floats up and out of the Doctor’s arms. She’s howling along with TARDIS now, somehow in tune with the Gallifreyan song. As the notes soar higher and higher, the light begins to dim, withdrawing back into the ship’s heart. The Bad Wolf is gone now, and a sleeping Rose floats down the the floor. The panel covering the heart of the TARDIS snaps shut as the last of the humming fades away.

In the darkness his women leave behind, the Doctor’s kneels buckle. There’s no one in need of saving, no one left to impress, nothing more to be done but fall to the grating and pray to the gods he once believed in that Rose will wake up and be all right.

That’s how Jack finds them when he stumbles to the ship, years or seconds later: in a heap of elbows and knees on the cold metal floor. “Ain’t we a sight for sore eyes,” he comments.

“Di’nt think you’d made it,” the Doctor replies.

He’s too gone to sound anything but gruff, but the captain doesn’t seem put off. He lifts an e-cig out of his pocket and takes a drag. “Me either, if I’m being honest. I took a hit to the chest and blacked out, then woke up surrounded by dust. I am impressed, Doctor.

“Wasn’t me.”

“Then who… Rosie?” The Doctor nods at that, grimacing, and the captain whistles soft and low. “I wanna hear all about it, but I think we could use the sleep first. Let’s park this baby, turn in, and trade notes in the morning.” Jack offers him a hand up.

“I am getting too old for this,” the Doctor quips as he gets his feet under him, then crouches down to pick Rose up again. “Just steer her into the Void, wouldya?” he asks over his shoulder as he carries the girl off.

Jack blinks in surprise at the request, and even manages a grin. “Sure thing, Doc,” he replies. “Hey, sexy lady,” he whispers to the console, gliding his fingers along switches and buttons. “I was hoping our first date would be something a little more romantic, but the four of us have had enough adventure for one day, am I right?”

There’s a sweet little buzz from the TARDIS in response. She glows her usual colors in all the right places, and off they whirr to a hidey hole where they can drift in peace for a little while.

* * *

The Doctor brings Rose to her room, which the TARDIS brings to them. There’s a wooden rocking chair beside the bed. “Thanks, love,” he whispers to his ship at the sight. He lays Rose down, and for once lets himself stare. 

She’s all pink and yellow, soft and curved, small and young… but there’s an avenging angel in there, fury and sunlight. He wonders if there had always been a Bad Wolf inside her, waiting to get free-- he wonders how he missed it before.

He gives in and strokes her face, just once. He almost lost her today, and would have had so many regrets… Well, now there’ll be time to fix that later. He thinks his thanks again to the TARDIS for the chair (for everything) and lets himself ease back into it and close his eyes.

* * *

Rose dreams of gnashing teeth and shining armor and the rising sun… and is surprised when she finds herself waking in her bed on the TARDIS-- which doesn’t make sense, since it still feels like home.

The Doctor is asleep in a big, over-stuffed recliner a few feet away, which certainly wasn’t in her room earlier. His mouth hangs open, snores drifting out. She’s never seen him sleeping before, she realizes, and wonders what could have have sent him to her room for a nap. Whatever it was, he still looks as tired as she feels, so she closes her eyes again and goes back to dreaming.

* * *

The next time Rose wakes, the Doctor is watching her. “‘Ello,” he says with a chipper tone and guarded eyes.

She blinks up at him in confusion. “What happened?”

“Don't you remember?” He doesn’t seem surprised at her confusion-- just worried.

“It's like…” like a feeling, she thinks, groping for words when all she has is sounds and colors. “There was this singing…”

“That's right! I sang a song and the Daleks ran away.” That line’s practically sing-song, which she knows is never a good sign.

“I was at home-- no I wasn't, I was in the TARDIS, and…” and she is drawing a blank. “I can't remember anything else.”

“That’s all right. I bet you’ll start getting it back soon. How do you feel?”

She’s been around the vortex enough to know that’s not an idle question. “What, am I hurt or something?”

“I dunno. That’s why I asked.” He pulls out the sonic screwdriver, points it at her and waves it like a wand.

She wiggles her fingers and toes, rolls her neck, and then sits up slowly. “I feel great, actually. Little wobbly in the head is all. Was I drinking?”

“Naw,” he replies, then studies the screwdriver a little too intently. “All the same, let’s get you to to the infirmary.” She’d object, or question him, or snark, but there’s something in the lines of the Doctor that’s wound up tight. Something’s wrong, and in this mood he’s best unprovoked.

He offers her his hand, and she takes it like always, but just this once they walk slowly to where they’re going.

* * *

A few thorough body scans of Rose and Jack later, the Doctor looks reasonably content-- as close to it as he ever gets, anyway. “You’re both tip-top, best I’ve ever seen ya.”

“Which makes no sense, since one of those tin cans hit me with green lightning,” Jack comments. His tone is calm, but he’s rubbing his sternum. “I shouldn’t be here at all, nevermind with a clean bill of health.”

“Tin cans?” Rose sputters. “Doctor, you weren’t serious about Daleks, were you?”

Jack blinks at the Doctor, who just shrugs. “Rosie, you don’t remember?”

“Just a pile of mad dreams. Some of it must have happened, but it’s all in pieces.”

“Well, we were on Satellite 5…” Jack begins.

“Shut it!” the Doctor snaps, stepping between them, and they both look at him sharply. “If her liver was confused, you wouldn’t try to clear that up yourself. Brain’s the only organ amateurs think they can mend.” He sighs, and his voice is softer when he continues, “Let her recover a bit before you go flooding her with things she’s not ready to remember.”

“Don’t I get a say in this?” Rose asks the Doctor’s back, a hand on his shoulder. “I’d like to know what happened, that you’re this nervous and Jack’s relieved to be alive.”

He turns from one companion to the other, meeting her gaze straightaway. “You trust me?”

“With my life!” she replies.

“Do I ever slow down?”

“Nope.”

“Then if I’m suggesting it now, I must mean it,” he replies in that tone that’s meant to brook no dissent, but his crinkly eyes are kind.

That’s not acceptable for her. “What if I never remember?” she asks, her voice too soft.

“I’ll give you a recap in a few days,” when he figures out what he can tell her safely. “But I’d trust your little brain on this one, Rose Tyler. It might be protecting you by forgetting.”

She’s got nothing to say to that. He might be right (like always) but it still rankles. “I’m gonna go for a walk,” she tells them, and lets the TARDIS guide her somewhere away so she can think.

As the tapping of her bare feet fades away, Jack asks, “Doc, what’s going on?”

“I sent her back to Earth. She broke into the heart of the TARDIS and came back to rescue us with the power of time and space glowing out her eyeballs.” Jack laughs, until he realizes that the Doctor hasn’t been joking, not with either of them. “Dissolved the entire Dalek fleet in the blink of an eye, but it almost killed her. I brought her back to the ship, who was kind enough to suck the power back out of her. Two days later, here we are.”

“And you don’t want her to know she saved our asses because..?”

“Jack, she was a conduit for unimaginable power. I mean that literally: unimaginable power. No offense, but it’s too much for a tiny human brain. If she remembers the wrong bit, she could blow a fuse.”

The captain curses in a few dialects, and the Doctor makes a mental to note to ask about one he doesn’t recognize, later. For now, he just nods in agreement, and the wanders off to calibrate… something. The TARDIS, as impossible as she can be sometimes, is still going to be easier to handle than his human companions for awhile.

* * *

Rose spends most of the next few days hiding. She alternates between jogging away her temper and lying in the tub with headphones on, trying to remember what she’s forgotten. The words “Satellite 5” and “Daleks” are enough to bring back most of the story, which conjures up the way she felt when the Doctor sent her away all over again.

That particular memory prompts a nice long run, then a good solid cry, and then pouting over a pint of strawberry ice cream.

The thing is, she still can’t remember anything that happened after she pried TARDIS open with a truck. (She has got to thank her mum and Mickey for that stunt, and the ship for not throwing her out an airlock yet!) Must’ve been something good, since they’re all alive…

She goes to raid her mini fridge again, but her stash of mochi has vanished. The TARDIS must have decided she’s hidden long enough… So she does her makeup for the first time in a week, pulls her hair up into a jaunty ponytail, and throws on her favorite denim jacket. Thus armored, she sets out to face her Doctor.

* * *

She finds him in the library, wound around a yellowed Agatha Christie paperback. He peers at her over the spine. “Why ‘ello there, Rose Tyler,” he says softly.

“Thought I might find you here. Where’s Jack?”

“Fiddlin’ under the hood, no doubt makin’ a mess of things,” he replies, hiding a little fondness under that gruff Northern accent. It makes Rose smile, so he grins back, and that makes everything a bit more okay.

She flops onto the other end of the long leather couch, and he sets his book down on the armrest. “I’ve remembered most of it,” she says, “but not the important part.”

He scoffs at that. “You mean to say opening up the heart of the TARDIS wasn’t important? Sure impressed me. How did you manage that?”

“With a truck hitch and some twentieth-century horsepower,” she replies, poker-faced for all of ten seconds before they both crack up. It feels natural to lean in and bump shoulders, so she does, and tells herself not to overthink it when they don’t pull apart after. “Doctor, what happened?” she asks once the last chuckle has faded.

He sighs. He’d been hoping she wouldn’t go there, would heed his advice and leave well enough alone. (He knew she couldn’t do that, not his brave and curious Rose, but he had wished for it anyhow.) “You borrowed some power from the TARDIS for a little while.”

“Doesn’t sound so bad.” She knows it must be.

“Not bad, just, well-- big. Too big for a human to hold onto, so when you were done she was kind enough to take it back.”

“When I was done?” She leans back so she can look him in the eye. “What’d I do?”

“You came back and saved us,” he replies firmly.

“I guessed as much, but how?”

“You sure you want to know?” She looks so young, and he feels so very old.

“How can I live with myself if I don’t?”

A bit of reading on human anatomy has made him reasonably confident that bare facts without sensory triggers shouldn’t be too dangerous. Still, he studies her pupils and the pulse point in her neck as he answers, “You turned the Dalek fleet to dust.”

“Oh, is that all?” she scoffs, but her eyes are wide.

He shakes his head. “On your way over, you scattered prophecies of your arrival throughout the fabric of the universe.”

She squeaks like her mother. “I what?!”

Best to get it over with, he thinks, and drops the last factoid. “And you might have brought Jack back from the dead.”

The utter impossibility of it all is drowning her a little bit, but Rose is tough. She closes her eyes and breathes in through her nose and out through her mouth until she feels like she’s treading water again.

When she feels ready to open her eyes, the Doctor is looking at her kindly. He extends a long arm, and she falls into it. She lets herself curl up against his chest, the way she’s wanted to since forever. “I really killed them, Doctor? All the Daleks?”

At first, he doesn’t reply. He just squeezes her shoulder, rests his chin on her head. “You saved the human race, Rose Tyler,” he counters at last. “You saved me. You were fantastic.”

“You know what?” she whispers up at him. “So were you.”


End file.
